Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony Computer Entertainment UK’s boss Fergal Gara has stepped down from the position, so he can “pursue a new professional venture”, according to MCV UK.
Since becoming the vice president and managing direct...

John Smedley co-founded EverQuest developer Verant Interactive, which morphed into Sony Online Entertainment following EverQuest's huge success. He even hung on after Sony sold SOE earlier this year, turning it into Daybreak ...

Want to try Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection before committing your cold, hard cash to it?
The demo will hit the PS Store later this summer, although how much of each game we'll get to sample in this free taster h...

A new 1TB PlayStation 4 - the Ultimate Player Edition - is headed for Europe from July 15.
"Offering twice the storage of the existing PS4," writes SCEE Blog Manager Fred Dutton on the PS Blog today, "you’ll be abl...

People with woefully poor short-term memories who take fifteen years to type in a code (read: me), rejoice - you can now redeem PSN codes directly through the PlayStation App.
Image credit: Toki767, NeoGAF
The best bit?...

As is always the case after a Gravity Rush 2-free show goes by, the lack of Gravity Rush 2 at E3 this year was a bummer, even after the report six months ago that it was, "in earnest development."
With Sony skipping gamescom ...

Jun 16 //
Steven Hansen[embed]294098:59077:0[/embed]
At the end of this, Drake goes crashing through the wooden plank, skips across the water, and ends up getting dragged through the mud on the other side. All the while he's shooting with one hand, hanging on for dear life with the other, because he is very strong. It's not quite just a set piece set up as that grappling hook is a huge part of Uncharted 4's gameplay systems and you'll always be able to shoot from it.
Drake pulls himself up onto the crane truck that'd been dragging him and so begins a long series of shooting with assumed bad guys on motor bikes as Drake tries to work is way to the front of the convoy chasing his brother, Sam. After hijacking a jeep and catching up, the two argue over who should jump to the other's vehicle. A little brotherly conflict. Then Nate gets blindsided by a truck and there's a nice, quieter moment of being pinned underneath a flipped over van that is increasingly on fire.
Nate hops on Sam's bike and that armored truck returns with a vengeance in a Sonic Adventure 2 style chase sequence towards the camera. Eventually, of course, they escape.
This is when we got wind of some story elements. Sully, Sam, and Nate are after collected treasure from a pirate commune, Libertalia. Someone named Rafe, presumably from Days of Our Lives, is trying to kill them. They chat up plans on the way into their motel and suddenly there's Nate, rarely tongue tied, as a very upset Elena is standing in the room. She hints that Nate was lying about being on a job in Malaysia and, as you can see above, she is pretty damn pissed off. It ain't anger, it's that, "I'm so hurt and disappointed in you" look that just cuts deep.
Nate fucked up. We'll know how bad next year.

Extended gameplay demoSony showed off Uncharted 4: A Thief's End yesterday to end its conference with a bang. A lot of them as a jeep careened through an entire city.
In today's behind closed doors session, we saw creative director on Uncharted 4 ...

The Tomorrow Children didn't make it into Sony's press conference, but the PS4 exclusive still looks rad. It's set in a divergent future that looks like 1960's Soviet Russia and its kitsch as all get out.
It's playable on the E3 showfloor, so I'm hoping to get some hands on it soon, preferably mine. Until then, you can read Dale's preview from last year.

Evolution has announced that plans to bring Driveclub to PlayStation Plus are "in the final stages of development."
We knew the servers were scheduled to be replaced and upgraded from June 1 as the developer "prepare[d] for t...

A promotional image for Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection has been leaked on the mobile US PlayStation Store.
We know nothing more than what the picture above tells us -- it's going to be a collection, (un)imaginatively...

Sony will be rolling out the PlayStation E3 Experience to more theaters in more states than ever before.
In a recent PlayStation blog post, Sony confirmed that the free event -- starting at 6pm PT on June 15 -- will...

The Last of Us had pretty good facial animation tech, at least as far as I was concerned. Faces were detailed, emotions were nuanced and it was always clear what the actor behind the character had wanted to convey. From my pe...

[Update #3]
The above video has just been released with the following description:
First of all, we apologize for giving you hopes to see Medievil and Sir Dan Fortesque in PS4, we didn´t try to piss nobody off or...

Left Behind was a great piece of story DLC for The Last of Us, filling in a portion of the main story that is glossed over and providing a clearer look at Ellie's origin. Any who want to try out the three-hour episode as a ta...

Sony is serving up selection of tantalising treats in this week's PlayStation Store sale. If Star Wars, shooting zombies, and, er, replaying the same missions over and over again are your thing, pay attention.
The Deal of the...

A Twitter bot may have spilled the beans on as-yet-unannounced new PlayStation Vita design.
The tweet, published on the weekend by @trademark_bot, shared details of a patent filed recently by Sony Computer Entertainment for "a portable LCD screen game machine controller."
That's right -- LCD. Not OLED.

It's that time of the month again. The time console warriors are able to pull out actual facts to back up their extreme fanboyism in the most heated of forum discussions.
Taking the top spot again for hardware was the PlaySta...

According to a listing from a Swiss retailer, a remastered collection the PS3 Uncharted Trilogy is coming to PS4 on 30 September 2015.
While the listing does feature box art, the art appears to have been cropped from an image...

I'm still playing MLB 15 The Show for our review. Instead of going to my PS3, uploading my Road to the Show shortstop to the Cloud, then importing it into my PS4, I stayed put (they're in different places) and made a new pit...

PlayStation's baseball monopoly continues this year with the consistently good MLB 15 The Show (PS3, PS4, Vita). That does come with more caveats than ever this year. Online servers seem to be shutting down for the previous ...

For those who have long abandoned the Hell that is cable television or those wanting to break free of its shackles, Sony is now offering its own alternative, the PlayStation Vue platform for the PlayStation 4 and 3.
Pretty mu...

Later this month Driveclub is going to be getting some new Lamborghini-themed DLC. The Lamborghini DLC pack, which comes with four new cars and a dedicated tour, is due out at some unspecified time later this month alongside...

As a semi-jaded gamer, I typically despise the concept of DLC. Often times we are presented with content that either doesn't live up to the price or publishers push their content too early in a game's life. Resogun Defenders ...

In the last month or so, invitations to various virtual reality headset demonstrations have made up a huge chunk of my inbox. GDC is into virtual reality. I worry someone will pull some garish box out of their bag this ...

Mar 03 //
Josh Tolentino
Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines (PS Vita [Reviewed], PlayStation TV)Developer: Alfa SystemPublisher: Sony Computer EntertainmentReleased: March 3, 2015 MSRP: $19.99
About that "dead soon" thing: It's the premise of the game. Players start as the head of a Japanese clan (that they construct themselves in a rather detailed character-creation interface), murdered to a man in a gruesome ritual of human sacrifice after being framed for the disasters rocking 12th-century Kyoto. Fate is kind, though, and a few members are brought back to life to exact revenge upon the wrongdoers. Unfortunately, everything has a cost, and the price for a second chance is the dual curses of Ephemerality and Broken Lineage. The first curse dooms all members of the clan to drop dead two years after their birth. The second prevents them from having offspring with humans. Talk about a double-whammy!
Thus the mission is set: Continue the family line long enough to break the curses, by having children with willing gods and spirits (sidestepping the "Broken Lineage" part), and having those children have their own children before their two years are up, in addition to becoming strong enough to defeat the villain that cursed the clan in the first place. It's a morbid and deliciously effective premise, so much so that one wonders why it hasn't been thought of before.
[embed]288441:57592:0[/embed]
Except...it has, for Oreshika is technically a sequel to 1999's Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke, an influential PS1 RPG that involved largely the same concepts. That said, the game never made overseas, which makes it completely new to most players. Its relative age, though, would explain why Oreshika feels like a pleasant throwback to the early years of Japanese RPG-making, when the primary influences on design came from free-roaming dungeon-crawlers like Ultima and Wizardry. That same narrative-light, systems-heavy approach largely defines Oreshika's play experience, which should delight fans who've begun to chafe under the typically linear storytelling of most JRPGs.
That isn't to say the story beats are absent. Oreshika has its own complement of directed cutscenes and dialog sequences, most involving named, voiced side characters. They appear during certain missions to drop some exposition or plot twists, and in some cases join the party. The meshing of traditional narrative with the game's more free-form structure isn't perfect, and it's during these moments that the player's own created clan can feel like extras in what is ostensibly their story. The missteps are mostly inoffensive, though, and to be fair, the story does end up going deeper than might have been possible without the benefit of more defined characters to fall back on.
Then again, perhaps that more traditional story wasn't that necessary at all, because for me, the most memorable moments in Oreshika come with each passing minute of my family's short, short life. The game is conducted on a month-to-month basis, either raiding or preparing to raid one of the land's many labyrinths. The preparation involves buying gear and items for use during the raid, improving the local town to upgrade the various shops' offerings, or performing the "Rite of Union" with many gods and goddesses to create offspring and ensure the family's continuation.
That might sound like a lot of babies to magic up, but considering that thanks to the rigors of dungeon-raiding many of the clan's members will kick the bucket long before their two years are up, a deep bench is critical. Longer games can go for hundreds of generations, and every death can hurt, thanks to the "XCOM effect" of growing attached to people one had a hand in creating and customizing themselves. Dying family even leave semi-randomized "parting words" upon their passing.
Oreshika's also quite adept at making that customization feel like it matters. Every new addition to the family takes on the characteristics of their parents, including inheriting physical features (which can turn out hilariously when uniting with some of the less "human" gods), and statistical traits. The game's item creation system allows "heirloom" gear to be created that gains power every time a departing family member bequeaths it to a new generation. And the game is all too happy to use the PS Vita's built-in screen capture function to take "family album" photos and collect them like fond mementos of bosses beaten and dungeons delved.
It's almost strange that for all the time one spends preparing for dungeon raids, Oreshika's combat and exploration are designed to be over and done with as quickly as possible. When out in the world, players are literally on the clock. A real-time counter ticks down towards the end of a given month, which lasts between five and ten minutes, depending on how many battles one gets into. At the end, players are given the option to go home, or continue the raid through the next month without rest, increasing the chance that tired or injured party members might die permanently. Given that every character is already born with a very short lifespan, the timers instill a kind of frenzied pace and tension to what could otherwise have been a ponderous affair.
"Frenzied" is also a good way to describe Oreshika's visuals, which are a riot of color and animation. The game's watercolor tones and melding of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock style, traditional folkloric creatures, and anime character design make it one of the best-looking titles on the platform, and possibly one of the prettiest "anime" games since the original Valkyria Chronicles. And thankfully, unlike many games that involve procreation as a concept, Oreshika lacks much of the prurient undertone that make such titles slightly embarrassing to play at times.
As lovely as the characters are environments don't fare quite as well, as the pace at which a typical dungeon run is conducted doesn't leave a lot of time to admire the sights. A limited camera setup and frequent use of revisiting (often to unlock a shortcut using a key found in some other dungeon) can also sap locations of their initial charm.
Despite the fact most of us will never have played the game it's a sequel to, the quality of Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines shines through its gorgeous visuals and deep mechanics. Come to think of it, there's no more fitting way for a game that's about leaving a worthwhile legacy to conduct itself.
[This review is based on a digital retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]

Generations of phwoarLike many games of its type, Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines features a tiny graphic in its text boxes to remind players they can press a button to advance to the next line. Usually the graphic is of an X or O button pressi...

Mar 03 //
Conrad ZimmermanHelldivers (PS4 [reviewed], PS3, PS Vita)Developer: Arrowhead Game StudiosPublisher: Sony Computer Entertainment AmericaReleased: March 3, 2015MSRP: $19.99
Helldivers is a squad-based sci-fi shooter, presented from an overhead perspective. Players take the role of a Helldiver, a special forces soldier trained to drop onto enemy planets from orbit as the tip of humanity's conquering spear. Given command of a ship, Helldivers are directed to venture into star systems controlled by three alien races which threaten Super Earth's way of life, pressing forward in an effort to conquer alien homeworlds.
While there's an absence of any real plot, the setting of Helldivers does enough to establish itself as a pointed satire of American exceptionalism, colonialism, and military pride. From propaganda messages promoting the idea that Super Earth is spreading "democracy" through the galaxy (by the totally legitimate means of conquest), to the flavor dialogue spoken by Helldivers in the midst of a firefight ("Have a nice cup of liber-tea!"), it presents a scenario in which it's made perfectly clear that there are no "good guys" in this war, only conquerors. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the sparse but effective setting material does just enough to allow the player to consider what they're engaging in without distracting from the action, while delivering wry chuckles here and there.
[embed]288491:57587:0[/embed]
Gameplay takes the form of planetary assaults, planned from the player's orbiting ship. Choosing between one of the three fronts of the galactic war, players are presented with a range of incrementally difficult worlds to attack, each with missions which must be completed to deliver it into the control of the Super Earth government. Missions consist of objectives which, while varying based on which race is being fought, boil down to defending control points, activating Super Earth technology already on the planet, escorting people and supplies, and destroying enemy installations.
It's a decent variety, and missions tend to offer a mix of objectives across the maps, rarely weighing too heavily on any one type of activity once the player is taking on missions with three and four objectives to complete. Escort tasks will probably still be everyone's least favorite thing to do, whether it's leading a group of survivors or following a supply train, but there isn't a whole lot of punishment received for failing objectives on a mission, so long as you can get off the planet. Every mission ends with a last stand scenario where the team must hold out against oncoming enemies for an extraction shuttle to carry them safely away, and at least one Helldiver must extract for the mission to succeed.
On the ground, Helldivers plays with an interesting balance of stealth and combat. Enemy patrols roam the map, looking for your squad. At worst, these are small packs of a few enemies that can be easily dispatched, but they're a tremendous threat to the mission. If a patrol spots the squad, they have to be killed immediately. Within seconds, patrol units can call in reinforcements to do real damage. And, while those troops are being dealt with, more patrols are moving in and calling their own squads of heavy hitters, snowballing into an massive conflict. Before long, the only options available become retreat or death.
This system allows the game to produce two distinct, potent forms of tension for the player. Combat encounters are exhilarating, with enemies actively working to flank and surround, Helldivers firing madly into hordes. That's all good stuff. But the system of patrol units makes it equally tense to be out of combat, knowing that an encounter with the potential to escalate into an unsalvageable mess could happen at any moment.
The three enemy races, Bugs, Illuminates, and Cyborgs, are all distinct entities. Illuminate patrols consist of lone scouting robots, while the Cyborgs have a pack of light troopers surrounding a sturdier commander and Bugs use units of four scouts, all able to call reinforcements. Cyborgs focus more on ranged weapons and Bugs take up a hard melee approach to combat. All of the races have their light, medium, and heavy enemy types, but that and a common enemy in humanity is about all they share.
Helldivers can access many implements of destruction to help bring democracy to the galaxy. Players select a primary weapon before missions from a pretty standard selection of assault rifles, shotguns and submachine guns, though more exotic flamethrowers and laser cannons are options too. All of the weapons are fun to play with and there is no weapon with disadvantages that cannot be overcome by skillful use.
In addition to guns, players complete their loadout with four "strategems," special abilities provided by the Helldiver's vessel in orbit. Strategems come in many shapes and sizes. Some drop in a pod with extra ammunition, powerful secondary weapons, or even vehicles. Others provide defensive countermeasures, like enemy lures and antipersonnel mines, while more offensive strategems lay down strafing fire or drop explosives. They're even used to heal and return fallen comrades to the battle. Coordinating with your squad in selecting them further enhances their power, as more squad members means more options.
These powerful tools also come with some downsides. Deploying a strategem is a two-step process which begins by using a communication device to input an authorization code, achieved by correctly tapping out an onscreen sequence for the desired strategem with the directional pad. This puts a targeting beacon in the player's hand, which may be thrown into the field to indicate where the strategem should be deployed. Here's the hitch: If one wanted to get technical, one could say it's actually a three-step process, in that the first step is putting down the gun. If you're tapping away at codes, you are not shooting that horde of cyborgs bearing down on you, and you're certainly not going to be able to take out that patrol creeping up from behind.
And then there's gravity. The Helldiver's requisitions arrive on the planet essentially the same way the Helldivers themselves did; they're dropped in from orbit. And while it seems obvious that you would avoid the immediate area around a beacon to which a phone booth sized hunk of metal is expected to plummet any second now, that little beacon can be overlooked when the bullets are flying (this is, of course, also a useful tactic for eliminating more troublesome enemies). It's especially risky when reviving squad members, as there's always doubt as to exactly where in the proximity of the beacon one to three people are going to suddenly crash on. Losing one Helldiver in the act of reviving another is a common occurence.
There is a certain measure of glee to be taken from Helldivers' unsympathetic attitude toward its rules of engagement. Friendly fire isn't a possibility; it's a certainty, but it's one the game applies to all living things and can be exploited as a combat strategy. Defensive turrets are able to distinguish friend from foe, but they cannot distinguish between foe and friend standing in front of foe. They'll just cut down anything in the direction of a target, knocking a hapless Helldiver prone and struggling for life. Death happens so often and so quickly, it becomes a source of constant humor. You will eventually see someone crushed by an extraction shuttle as it lands and you will probably laugh. They will probably laugh too.
Completing missions earns experience points toward increasing rank, with higher ranks gaining access to more powerful weaponry. Weapons and strategems can be upgraded by spending resource points, earned with each rank and by collecting samples scattered throughout mission areas. Finishing all of the missions on a planet provides its own reward, either a new strategem or bonus experience points.
Missions also award influence, representing the player's contribution to the larger galactic war participated in by all players. Influence is earned by finishing all mission objectives successfully, escaping with the full squad intact, and keeping casualties to a minimum, with higher difficulties multiplying the amount of influence earned. These points are used to determine leaderboard rankings, but also to determine the course of the war. A single war will last four to six weeks, with the results affecting the difficulty of the war to follow.
Each front is represented by a map with sectors separating Super Earth and the enemy homeworlds. Sectors become controlled by Super Earth when enough influence has been earned by all players, eventually extending all the way to the enemy homeworld. Reaching a homeworld triggers an event during which players have a limited amount of time to assault the source of an enemy race in the hope of conquering them completely, a feat which will require far more people than the small group playing in pre-release.
The galactic war doesn't have a huge impact on the game, other than providing an excuse for event missions to occur. Yet, it does make you feel as though you're contributing to the accomplishment of a goal, and it's satisfying to see the rundown of which sectors have been taken and lost since the last time you played. It feels like something's happening around you, even if that something may just be statistics.
Helldivers is best experienced as a multiplayer game, and joining an online session is about as quick and easy as starting a mission of your own. A couple of quick menu selections and you will, quite literally, drop in on another player's mission in progress. Local multiplayer is also an option and, in the absence of outside life, it's still enjoyable solo. Playing alone requires different strategies and offers less flexibility in strategem selection, which does make the already brutal higher difficulties seem even more insurmountable, but the satisfaction of single-handedly conquering a planet cannot be denied.
Unrelenting and brutal, Helldivers delivers fast-paced combat, epic standoffs and a comical approach to death. Its enemies are varied, powerful and a constant threat to the players. While the full impact of the larger multiplayer experience remains to be seen, it still adds a nice little scratch to the progress itch. The strategem system provides great flexibility in squad building with many ways to build out team roles to maximize defensive and offensive capabilities. With procedural map generation and just enough mission and enemy variety to prevent a sense of repetition, the twelve levels of difficulty ought to keep players challenged for a good long time.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]

In the grim darkness of the near future...Mankind has expanded throughout the galaxy, having come together under one government, a "managed" democracy. From the Super Earth homeworld, humanity spreads its message of liberation and freedom to every planet they land upon; the liberation of their natural resources and freedom from human opposition, that is.
And if you don't like it, expect them to spread a whole lot of ordinance instead.

Last Monday, venerable MMO studio Sony Online Entertainment was sold to Columbus Nova investment firm as part of Sony's on going restructuring. Not even two weeks later, an unknown number of employees have reportedly been lai...